For a moment she lay poised and panting. Her hips and knees were trembling and watery; her pulse thrummed between her legs. There was a tug and a sinewy slice as the cord was severed. Then the splutter of the infant’s cry. It echoed deep into Caroline’s own lungs and Caroline gloried in it, lifting her thanks to God.
Suddenly freed from the crush and strain, she went all but blank inside as Mrs. Scott tended to the child. The grip around her began to unknot, making Caroline’s body her own again. She had not fully taken hold of the change before Mrs. Scott was laying the toweled infant across her chest.
“Here we are,” Mrs. Scott said. “A fine little daughter, Mrs. Ingalls.”
And there it was before her—the face her mind had been unable to conjure for all these months, so close Caroline felt the moisture of the baby’s breath. Caroline inhaled, tasting it, and the world gentled around her, waking her blunted senses to glimmering sensitivity. Even the heat seemed softer, carrying the scent of the prairie into the cabin, ripe and golden.
Outside the shell of Caroline’s body, the baby girl looked small and crinkled as a nut meat. Her skin glowed reddish-purple from its rubbing of lard. Caroline dipped her finger into the downy hollow below one delicate ear. The child rumpled into a squall.
“Ticklish,” Mrs. Scott observed with a smile, but Caroline’s heart jerked as though she’d been rebuked.
Caroline cupped her palms over the hunched shoulders and clenched bottom. “There . . . there now,” she said as the firmness of her touch steadied them both. The child’s eyelids unbuckled, immersing Caroline in a deep, slow stare. Chest to chest, they rode the lengthening crests and troughs of each other’s breath. Caroline let her hands fill with the vitality before her—the gusting lungs, the bird-wing flit of heart. So much life throbbing within a space barely larger than a jelly jar.
Without breaking her gaze, Caroline unbuttoned the yoke of her nightdress and bared a breast. The baby nudged toward it after a time, mouth agape. Her limbs moved in small ripples, still accustomed to the watery press of the womb. Even before they reached her nipple the little gums worked, sparking fine grains of foremilk to life beneath Caroline’s skin. Caroline closed her eyes and took her ease.
As the baby suckled, Caroline stroked the lines of her—the gully at the back of her neck, arms and legs folded tightly as a fresh handkerchief. The top of her head with its wisp of tar paper–black hair had a faint honeyed scent, like pollen. Within a few minutes, Caroline’s womb constricted again and the afterbirth slicked out. The rich iron smell of it suffused the room. Mrs. Scott tied it into a cloth and carried it outside to bury.
Lying open to wind and sun, Caroline no longer felt bounded by her skin. Her heart beat deeper, rounder, thrusting her awareness beyond herself, as though its vibration melded with all that touched her. Every inch seemed to breathe and taste. Caroline soaked in the silky essence of the child nuzzled against her, the straw tick sighing beneath her, and reached for more. Putting a hand to the wall, she let the fibers of wood snag her fingertips, then smoothed them against the cool chinking. She turned her eyes to the rafters spreading overhead like open arms. All that sheltered them had been pulled, living, from the land. The whole of the house was a cradle of grass and timber and clay, proffered by the prairie and joined by the labor of Charles’s hands. Caroline listened to the bite of the shovel and the fleshy thump of the afterbirth dropping into the ground. After all they had taken from it, it seemed fitting that this most raw and nourishing part of her should be swallowed by the land.
The strange flavor of that thought still wafted in Caroline’s mind when Mrs. Scott came in to sponge her clean. With each cooling stroke Caroline’s consciousness settled more deeply back into herself. Between daubings, she closed her eyes and waited for the singing of the droplets against the bowl. This water she so savored, Caroline realized as Mrs. Scott lifted the dripping sponge from the basin, had nearly cost both their husbands’ lives. Her thankfulness that she should be beholden to her neighbor for this day and not the other flowed like her milk, so free and warm Caroline could not bind it into words.
It made no matter; there was no space between them that wanted for talk. To Caroline it seemed as though drawing the bucket from the gullet of that well had subdued Mrs. Scott. For all the earlier stridence of her voice, she spoke only with her hands as she guided the band of linen around Caroline’s middle and pinned it firmly in place. Mrs. Scott squared the heaviest pad of flannel-covered oilcloth beneath her to take up the bleeding, then evened the nightdress over Caroline’s knees as neatly as Caroline might have done herself. All the while she worked, Mrs. Scott kept her face turned steadily to her tasks, as though she understood that this birth had uncovered more of the meat of Caroline’s soul than of her body.
She was skirting the edges of sleep when Charles and the girls returned.
Before Mrs. Scott could hush them, Laura and Mary cascaded through the doorway, their hands and feet tinged pink from the sun.
“Ma!” Laura cried. “Look, Ma!” Caroline’s chest stirred to Laura’s voice as though her affection were a living thing. It was nothing new to be called Ma, but the sound of the word was fresher now, and larger.
At the sight of her ma in the bed in the middle of the day and a stranger at the hearth, Laura pulled up short. Mary had not moved. Charles wove between them, agleam. The naked shine of his pride made Caroline feel shy as a little girl with Mrs. Scott standing by. Modesty tucked her face down so that her nose touched the baby’s forehead, but Caroline could not mask the breadth of her smile as Charles drew near. He crouched along the edge of the bedstead and looked at the child coiled in the crook of her arm. One tiny hand was flung upon Caroline’s breast. The constellation of pink fingertips dimpled her skin. Charles rubbed a thumb over the back of his daughter’s hand, then leaned in to kiss Caroline’s cheek. The tenderness in his eyes touched her before his lips, and the empty bowl of her womb fluttered.
“Look what Ma has for you to see,” Charles said to Laura.
Neither of the girls moved until Caroline turned back the sheet so they could look. Mary’s lips parted in delight. She came, bringing Laura by the hand.
At Charles’s elbow Laura broke loose and hung back. She peered warily at the bundle of black hair and red skin, then laughed. “Another Indian!” Charles twinkled at her. Caroline could hardly return their smiles for the trembling of her lips. All her months of apprehension had blinded her to this sparkling flock of moments. She had not savored their coming, and now each one settled only long enough to brush her with its wings before another took its place.
Mary had gone down on her knees beside the bed, gazing at her new sister as though she were a stick of candy too sweet to lick. “Such a tiny, tiny baby,” she breathed.